Microsoft’s Xbox is looking to bring a long-awaited feature to gamers this year that will enable the use of player-owned game library access via Xbox Cloud gaming.
According to a conversation between Xbox lead Phil Spencer and Twitter user @sburg85 aka NASburg and confirmed by the folks over at Windows Central, the ability for Xbox gamers to play their owned games via xCloud,”should be this year.”
The conversation between Spencer and NASburg was short, direct, and simple, despite the enormity of the news being unearthed. Last week, Spencer and a few other Xbox executives gathered around to shed some clarity on rumors that began surfacing about an exclusivity strategy that fans felt might harm the platform.
On the inaugural episode of the Xbox Podcast, Spencer and company laid out a timid plan to release four Xbox exclusive titles to other platforms that include Sony and Nintendo as promising some new hardware soon. While cagey on the actual title names, Spencer alluded to mid-tier and indie titles being among the first batch of games making their way to rival platforms in 2024, with AAA-level titles remain an Xbox-only deal for now.
The news of four mid-level games being tested on other platforms wasn’t the bombshell many journalists in the industry had publicized the impending news to be, however, this news about owned games being accessible via xCloud could very well upended last week’s news as the biggest announcement for the platform this year.
Currently, there is no mechanism in place for Xbox gamers to access their owned games in conjunction with xCloud leaving the experience an executively curated affair from the game selection committee in the Xbox offices and select gaming studios.
The proposed cloud gaming expansion this year would be akin to Netflix allowing customers to combine their Plex servers with the vast library of first- and third-party content in Netflix’s current library.
While Spencer tackles the question of gamers being able to access their owned-game library content via xCloud, there will undoubtedly be some caveats in practice. xCloud is already expensive and resource intensive enough with its currently highly curated games profile. In addition, latency and performance of graphically intensive games could be an issue as the Xbox team looks to scale xCloud to accommodate an explosion of new titles. Lastly, Microsoft will need to work out a content library repository that acknowledges licensing and support from developers and studios for their older titles.
Nevertheless, it looks like Xbox is going to have a big year if Spencer is to be believed with the advent of this news, Diablo 4 hitting Xbox consoles, and potential new and more powerful mid-generation devices all planned for 2024.
